Bitcoin (BTC) price continued upward as it regained the $70,000 level to reach a 9-day high on March 25. The upside move recovered the previous week’s losses and has traders wondering if a new all-time high is in store.. 

Bitcoin price. Source: TradingView

Let’s look into the reasons why Bitcoin price is up today.

GBTC Spot BTC ETF outflows may be tapering

As Bitcoin price remains within striking distance of new all-time highs, investor sentiment has waivered as measured by the Market Prophit index. The sentiment decrease could be due to the record outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) spot Bitcoin ETF.

Crowd sentiment (yellow) and BTC price (purple). Source: Market Prophit

Despite a bevy of macro headwinds and over 31,000 BTC outflows from GBTC, Bitcoin price has quickly recovered.

Even with the rapid Bitcoin price recovery, BTC continues to leave exchanges. On March 25, Bitcoin held on Coinbase hit a 9-year low.

Bitcoin balance on Coinbase. Source: Glassnode

Related: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments: Trezor CEO

ETFs open the door for major institutional investor inflows

The spot Bitcoin ETF market was led by GBTC’s $2 billion in outflows. Despite these outflows, $1.1 billion of new spot Bitcoin ETF inflows were present for the week proceeding March 25. This marked the first time in 7-weeks that outflows were greater than inflows.

According to CoinShares data, institutional investors pushed $12.3 billion into crypto year to date in 2024. For context, for the entire year of 2021, crypto products set a record with $10.6 billion in yearly inflows.

Crypto asset institutional investor inflows. Source: CoinShares

Of the $12.3 billion pushed to crypto assets in 2024, over $11.9 billion has flowed to Bitcoin specifically. The total assets under management (AUM) for Bitcoin dwarfs other digital assets, with $68.8 billion currently deployed.

Crypto asset institutional investor asset flow. Source: CoinShares

Related: Bitcoin ETFs could soften BTC price retracement before the halving

Retail investors’ interest in Bitcoin increases

Institutional investors are not the only investor cohort showing increased interest in Bitcoin. The number of Bitcoin wallets holding non-zero amounts of BTC has remained above 51 million for the entirety of 2024.

Non-zero Bitcoin wallets. Source: Glassnode

Not only are there more Bitcoin wallets than ever before, but because of consistent month-over-month price growth, on March 24, only 3% of wallets are at a loss.

Bitcoin address in a loss. Source: Look into Bitcoin

The spike in non-zero wallets, Bitcoin on exchange exodus and continued institutional interest suggest strong bullish optimism for BTC price.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.